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This week on Uprising:

* Economic Report Warns New Financial Crisis Inevitable
* Reproductive Rights in Jeopardy in Healthcare Bill, Utah, Nebraska, and W Virginia
* Black Agenda Report on Hurricane Katrina and Police Violence
* Supreme Court Once Again Tests State Gun Control Laws

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Economic Report Warns New Financial Crisis Inevitable

A new report by a group of prominent economists this week warned that banks are still engaged in high-risk investing activity that is making another, potentially bigger financial crisis not only likely, but inevitable. The group includes Rob Johnson of the United Nations Commission of Experts on Finance, plus Elizabeth Warren, chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel to oversee the bank bailout. The report, commissioned by the Roosevelt Institute, points out how banks are using borrowed funds to take risks similar to the ones that crashed the economy in 2007 in order to continue to pay big dividends to share-holders and obscenely large bonuses to executives. The economists also urge the President and Congress to strengthen proposed financial regulations to stem the new crisis-in-making, and called out Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke and Treasure Secretary Timothy Geithner for overseeing “policy as the bubble was inflating.” The report said, now “these same men are designing our ‘rescue.'” The report used unusually strong language to warn what could happen if no action was taken: “What will happen when the next shock hits? We may be nearing the stage where the answer will be — just as it was in the Great Depression — a calamitous global collapse.”

GUEST: Max Fraad Wolff, an instructor at the Graduate Program in International Affairs at the New School University who regularly writes on the economy

Read the Roosevelt Institute’s report at http://www.makemarketsbemarkets.org/report/MakeMarketsBeMarkets.pdf

Reproductive Rights in Jeopardy in Healthcare Bill, Utah, Nebraska, and W Virginia

On Thursday, twelve Democratic Congressional representatives, led by Bart Stupak, vowed to vote down President Obama’s health care reform bill. At issue is language in the bill that they perceive allows for the use of public funding of abortions. In fact, the bill includes stipulations that require insurers to separate public and private premiums, using only private funds to pay for abortions. However, Stupak takes his objections further, opposing even indirect funding for abortions, including for those receiving government subsidies. This includes 85% of all those who would be covered under a health insurance exchange. Stupak’s cause is the most publicized in a series of ongoing battles surrounding abortion that reach from Congress and the White House to state legislatures. In Utah, a bill criminalizing illegal abortions and providing loopholes that could also punish women who miscarry passed the state’s legislature, but was then vetoed by Governor Herbert. The legislature is currently re-working the bill to exclude the provision on miscarriage after much debate and controversy. Meanwhile, in Nebraska lawmakers are attempting to ban all late-term abortions (except where the mother’s life is threatened) on the basis that they cause pain to the unborn fetus. This claim of fetal pain is not supported by the medical community—the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists states that it knows of “no legitimate evidence that shows a fetus can experience pain.”

GUEST: Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, Staff Attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project

For more information, visit www.aclu.org.

Black Agenda Report on Hurricane Katrina and Police Violence

Glen Ford is a writer and radio commentator and the Executive Editor of The Black Agenda Report. This week’s commentary is on Katrina and Police Violence.

Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

Supreme Court Once Again Tests State Gun Control Laws

In 2008 the US Supreme Court struck down a handgun ban in Washington DC, in favor of citizens’ Second Amendment rights to bear arms outside of the military. Gun control advocates anticipated a barrage of challenges to similar laws in various other states following the ruling. Now, a handgun ban in Chicago nearly identical to the DC law, has reached all the way to the Supreme Court where justices are being asked to determine whether their 2008 ruling extends beyond the Federal Government and its enclaves like DC, into states. Many states and cities have their own gun control laws, and while the nation’s highest court seems likely to affirm its earlier decision, there is also some indication that a few justices believe that states’ do have the right to set some rules regarding individual ownership of firearms and where they can be carried. However, since President Obama took office many states have been relaxing gun control laws, giving in to conservative fears of an anti-gun White House. Obama’s signature on legislation allowing guns in national parks and on Amtrak trains has not eased those fears. Meanwhile the numbers of deadly incidents involving guns by anti-government conservatives, is on the rise as evidenced by the recent shooting at the Pentagon by a California man.

GUEST: Josh Horwitz, Executive Director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, filed an Amicus brief in the case McDonald Vs. Chicago

For more information, visit www.csgv.org.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

“Guns are neat little things, aren’t they? They can kill extraordinary people with very little effort.” — John W. Hinckley, Jr.